brand as business bit: The other night I got to attend “An Evening with Switchfoot,” an intimate experience in which the popular rock band played a few sets and talked about their music. Band leader John Foreman described one of the challenges they face, and it sounded awful lot like what I hear from business leaders as they build their companies:

There’s a bell curve of a song. When you’re writing it, you’re really passionate. Then the group has to learn it as a band, and sometimes it’s not quite right, but there’s a lot of passion. Then you get to the top and you’re playing it really well, and then you come down the other side [of the curve] and the challenge is how to play it as inspired as when you first learned it.